Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust
286 Responses
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Moving right along then - Value for money:
http://tvnz.co.nz/breakfast-news/value-money-in-new-zealand-education-video-4939848
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DexterX, in reply to
I think the heartfelt plight of the teacher speeches are to some degree irrelevant in this discussion. There are many people in this country who work damn hard, in their professions for the same or less money - and they should be no less valued. By all of us.
You miss the point - the plight of teachers and how they are and of late have been treated is not irrelevant by any means.
On the matter of schooling - The most important thing you can be schooled in is how to learn, to be able to teach yourself.
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Moving right along then – Value for money:
http://tvnz.co.nz/breakfast-news/value-money-in-new-zealand-education-video-4939848
I hope this is playing in Ms Parata’s dreams tonight :)
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tim kong, in reply to
As a teacher, I'm well aware of the point.
But IMO, National aren't treating only teachers wrong - they're treating public education and learning wrong - that's the point.
The fact that teachers are getting dumped on is a result of that. I'd prefer to focus on how National's policies make for poor educational processes and outcomes, and as a result of that conversation, we can discuss the place and role of teachers in our society.
The backdown on class sizes wasn't driven by people worrying about the fate of teachers. It was a result of parents being told the plain facts about the impact of that policy, ie. "Our school will have 2 less teachers in 2013" and then complaining accordingly. Complaints were driven by their concerns about the impact on their child, not the feeling for their child's teacher. That's how I read it.
As Sacha points out upthread, a more wide-ranging inclusive discussion between parents and teachers is what will make the deepest political impact.
I may have phrased it wrong, and disrespected Yamis and Jackie's opinions in doing so - and for that I apologise.
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No worries. I agree with 100% of the rest of your posts. :)
I think that parents probably did respond focussing on the impact on their childs education of having a couple extra kids in the class. But at the same time they are realising that the poor teacher will have to sit down at an extra desk or two explaining something before arriving at their childs and that sucks for everybody because the clock is ticking.
Most days I am in the situation of having to very quickly explain something in a one on one situation because other students are waiting, or not being able to get to properly get to the kids that are disengaged because I'm too busy focussing on those that are actively asking for clarification on something.
What is EXTREMELY important in terms of national standards, and 'failure/success'... and class sizes is the importance of class sizes based on class ability. Class sizes don't matter so much when class behaviour and class ability is solid because you can get the class to shush quickly, and they all understand something the first time you explain it or near enough. But class size is extremely important when you have students who are less well behaved and take longer to understand new concepts and ideas. As a general rule you could have 26-32 students in the former, but 18-24 is a better number in the latter. Only that never happens. In my experience anyway. They are 28 or thereabouts in both.
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Yamis, in reply to
I've heard from one primary school that the data gathered for the ministry is now being assessed on a much lesser scale than the curriculum demands. The reason I presume is to make sure the kids all "pass" in numbers such that National Standards can be declared a success.
Revisiting the start of this topic...
The teacher of my 5 year old said that after a year at primary, students should be at a reading level of 15 according to national standards BUT she felt that level 13 was fine for students at that age. They are just numbers to me but I realise that they are code for the difficulty of book that they can read.
And this is at a decile 9 school where most kids are being read to every night.
We are a reading household, with hundreds of books and my daughter loves them, so if she's below the national standard then where is the bar being set?
Literacy is utterly vital to success in secondary school, I see the results of poor literacy every day and so WE must make sure that all students entering high school are at the required level of literacy in order to even be able to compete. But if we are going to spend money testing then we need to spend ten times more money assisting those who aren't going to be ready. Another issue is the huge number of ESOL students in schools now. Whilst most schools probably have some facility for them to be getting extra help they are by and large chucked into mainstream and when they fail they become part of the failing 'tail' which we get blamed for, nevermind they don't understand us because we aren't speaking to them in Korean, Chinese, Indian, Portugese or Swahili.
bonus round...
Contemporary teenage slang words of the day: "dry" and "care".
You get 1 point if you've heard them used by teens recently and 2 points if you know what they mean and can apply them in a sentence/context.
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Regarding the problematic tendency for public schools to cherry-pick the best and brightest outside-zone students, perhaps the use of a mandatory ballot system to determine who gets in and who doesn’t would lead to more equable social outcomes. Failing that, schools could be required to select outside-zone children based on a predetermined standards achievement ratio/formula. (for which National Standards would be a useful source of data)
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bmk, in reply to
The teacher of my 5 year old said that after a year at primary, students should be at a reading level of 15 according to national standards BUT she felt that level 13 was fine for students at that age. They are just numbers to me but I realise that they are code for the difficulty of book that they can read.
And this is at a decile 9 school where most kids are being read to every night.
We are a reading household, with hundreds of books and my daughter loves them, so if she's below the national standard then where is the bar being set?
Same here - except my daughter is 6 and 1/2 and at decile 5 school. We read to her every night and she seems to be getting there (just slower than other students). Her reading level is 14 which is below where she is supposed to be. But her teacher tells us we don't need to worry that she is improving and will get there. She can read failing though and understand it. So is that what she's going to see from National Standards?
In the past we got great, detailed reports listing overall comments. And even more helpful a list of skills and her aptitude at them. Positively framed so that it went something like Got It, Mostly There, Getting There, Still to Come. People may say those are meaningless phrases but as parents we understood exactly where she was with every thing (counting backwards from 20 etc) and it was worded in a way that wouldn't lower her self-esteem which of course will hinder further learning.
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Today's front-page story in the Dom basically blames parents who use the TV as a substitute babysitter. And, here's the stinger:
New Zealand Principals' Federation president Paul Drummond said principals and teachers were reporting increasing numbers of children arriving at school lacking basic abilities.
"The disparity and the gaps around student readiness for school is disturbing. There are developmental differ-ences anyway, but you would hope that 5-year-olds would arrive at school with the skills to talk and have vocab that reading and writing can be built from."
It showed how ridiculous it was to expect every child to reach a national standard, when some started from such low levels, he said.
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Sacha, in reply to
But if we are going to spend money testing then we need to spend ten times more money assisting those who aren't going to be ready.
And with constrained budget and staff, the money spent on testing is subtracted from the already inadequate resources for remedial action. Schools already know which students need that investment. Sensible leaders would find ways to support that better, not undermine it as this govt is hellbent on doing.
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Sacha, in reply to
Positively framed so that it went something like Got It, Mostly There, Getting There, Still to Come.
I like those
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Perhaps, if we trusted teachers as experts in their field and let them decide the best way to teach kids the problem would go away (if there actually is a problem and not just a bunch of numbers that don't look good for election purposes). I am sick of this Government not only dismissing expert opinion but claiming that experts are a problem to be dealt with because they don't agree with the ideology.
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Sacha, in reply to
Tt's bog-standard neoliberalism to claim that sector experts are biased and so must be ignored.
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Scott Chris, in reply to
[New Zealand Principals’ Federation president Paul Drummond]It showed how ridiculous it was to expect every child to reach a national standard, when some started from such low levels, he said.
So we should lower our expectations for these kids?
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
So we should lower our expectations for these kids?
No, it’s just that National Standards misses the point and is fixated on attacking the symptom.
Is pressure-cooker education really the way forward? Hardly likely.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Is pressure-cooker education really the way forward?
Not at all. Pressure-cooker education is precisely why we intend to move back to NZ by the time our wee one needs a primary school. I really don't like the state my students arrive at university in - [gross generalisation alert] intelligent, creative, with lots of potential, but desperately lacking in maturity, many basic life skills, and any real understanding of the world around them. The system here really does not serve them very well.
To be fair to the system, though, [gross generalisation alert], the extreme neuroticism of modern Chinese parents really does not help matters.
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As the father of a disabled child I can't see anything good about high pressure education at all. Kids are humans, not merely future worker bees, and it should be about giving them a wide range of skills for the rest of their lives, in many aspects of those lives. It really is amazing what a shadow economics has cast over our lives when you consider just how much we have compared to our ancestors.
Don't buy into it. We all get to be kids only once. It should be a happy time. It sets the tone for the rest of our lives. It sets the tone for the future of our society.
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It's impoverished education rather than pressure cooker. Like boiling every kind of food until it is uniform grey sludge. We deserve better than gruel.
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WH,
Roger makes his case by asking what individual parents would like to know about their local schools. If you're fortunate enough to be able to choose, Roger implies, you would want to send your children to the school with the highest ranking. Maybe it confuses league table ranking with educational quality, but when he puts it like that, you can understand his point of view. He's a parent too, you know, in a way he's somewhat like the rest of us.
But we fund public schools so that all children can get an education, not just Roger's. Our education system, unlike the Herald, focuses on the standard of teaching in all schools, whatever their ranking. What does it mean to have one school ranked higher than another if we still have kids attending the lower ranked school? It tells us that some of our children are not being as well educated as the others. And that's before you consider the way in which league tables warp the way in which kids are taught.
You might be surprised to learn that some people send their kids to private schools.
Roger Partridge was a intelligent and capable solicitor, one smart enough to make a case in terms you and I would find attractive. While Roger was defending a high profile insider trading case, one of his acolytes asked me whether insider trading really needed to be illegal. I'm disappointed, but somehow not surprised, that Roger now represents an organisation that champions policies that somehow only benefit people like Roger. I guess I wonder, five years into the largest international economic crisis in eighty years, does he really believe this stuff?
Ask yourself Roger, what would Jesus do.
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Perhaps I'll feel differently when I'm a parent, but I'm glad I went to a quite terrible high school. (Small town, no choice- had to take wacky subjects like sixth-form History via correspondence school.) I'm sure I would've got much better marks if I'd gone to Grammar, but once you're in tertiary that's irrelevant anyway. I rapidly realised on arriving at university that I was surrounded by idiots from good schools and smart people who'd made it there despite coming from small towns and poor suburbs. And the smart people were also the nice people, because they'd never had some bullshit illusion of superiority instilled in them by their secondary education.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
what would Jesus do
Dunno, but I know what he would drive:
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linger, in reply to
And then there’s Japan. Cartoon by Roger Dahl, Japan Times 24th June 2012.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Excellent. I must save a copy and show it to my students next semester.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
And then there’s Japan. Cartoon by Roger Dahl, Japan Times 24th June 2012.
Although they're starting to relax things a little. If there's one plus-side to Japan's ageing population, it's the receding of Japan's university entrance rat race, courtesy of fewer students applying in the first place.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
I rapidly realised on arriving at university that I was surrounded by idiots from good schools and smart people who'd made it there despite coming from small towns and poor suburbs. And the smart people were also the nice people, because they'd never had some bullshit illusion of superiority instilled in them by their secondary education.
From my experiences, entering university largely filtered out the big-dollars-little-sense brigade I encountered at secondary college. In my final year, no less than 7 of these types got nabbed and suspended on drugs charges. It only reinforces my conclusion that wealth isn't always proportional to intellect.
Maybe it also depends on which discipline you study as well - I wouldn't be surprised if the B.D.L.S. set are disproportionately weighted towards law and commerce departments.
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